Echoing some of the existing comments: Games and sites today are vastly different than they were 20 years ago.

Games like Civilization, Quake, Diablo, C&C, Mortal Kombat, Tony Hawk etc... were definitely addictive.

But modern games like Fortnite and Clash of Clans are not engineered the same way. They are specifically designed to function like a slot machine.

I was an avid "gamer" growing up. I wasn't always the most responsible with it. Probably overdid it a lot. But I can see with my own child, this is a different ball-game altogether.

Not sure what the fix is either, other than ruthless enforcement of quotas.

I work in the gambling industry, making literally slot machines.

Slot machines are heavily regulated and there is a lot of "engagement" tricks that can not be used in the gambling industry. The kind of trick that Candy Crush will use.

The dangerous side of gambling is for people that think that they can "win money". But the games themselves are kind of boring by design. Regulations force us to make them boring. (And that is a good thing, I will not work on this industry otherwise).

The future of on-line games and mobile games is regulation. Micro-payments, push-notifications, etc. cannot be used without limits. People have right to their mental health more than companies have to higher profits.

I'm also curious about want Candy Crush does that a slot machine can't by regulation? Is it a level of interactivity?

Candy Crush can (and does) let you play freely, only to popup the "insert coin to get help" when you are stuck. It also adjusts the game play to your level (by advancing to harder levels) so that you are always challenged and possibly get stuck. If you advance by paying, you probably will need to pay more to get further (if you failed an easier level without help you will probably fail later levels without such help).

In an imaginary world, a slot machine could have a camera to track who is playing. It would let you play for free the first few times, even give you some money, but leaving you one "advance" short of the stronger payments. After some rolls, you are prompted to insert coins to get extra advances. Of course, the machine keeps the payment structure favorable to itself, but tricking you into inserting more and more coins, all the while getting you hooked into the game. It could even adjust the payment structure to be more and more in its favor the more "hooked" it detects you are.

Regulation that prevents the above:

1. Slot machines cannot track users by any means.

2. The payment distribution has to fit certain parameters (think X% of money given back within N rolls)

They’re intended for people that gamble a lot - not so much if you lose, it’s more about the level of money your putting at risk over time. Long run, the casino will make money off you. They want you to stay at their property. It’s also a way to recoup losses if you’ve won a lot.

I had a good run on slots and craps once at the Venetian, and was invited to a slot tournament with a free dinner and 3 free nights stay. I then won the slot tournament. But my broader non-tournament play didn’t keep up with the level they were looking for (they wanted you to take the tournament money and spend it there) so the comps got fewer and weaker. They came back months later when I started playing and winning (show tickets, dinners, etc). A bit of play credit can happen but it’s usually not a lot unless you’re a high roller (tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars).

Before the casino cards it was the pit bosses that would keep an eye on you, so this predates surveillance technology, it’s old school.

The industry is getting too greedy these days, even paid AAA games have this microtransaction crap, they are milking gamers dry.

Ironically the gaming press barely talks about this.

Candy Crush seems to specialize in near misses, for example by creating levels where almost all of the achievements required to pass a given level are easy, and then one is next to impossible. You don’t keep $1 billion+ per year coming in on a years-old game without some serious psychological tricks.

Is that a state-by-state regulation? A federal regulation? And does the regulating code specifically mention physical machines?

Thanks in advance for satisfying my curiosity.

Slot machines are regulated because they fall under the category of gambling and video games don't meet the legal definition of gambling. (Although, I'd agree that it's starting to seem more and more as if they should.)

There's a pretty good explanation of the criteria at https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti... but the brief summary (from the article) is "Gambling consists of three elements: consideration, prize and chance. If any one of those three elements is missing, the game is simply not gambling (Rose, 1986))."

By looking at those criteria, there's a lot of ways video game companies can defend themselves. The strongest one IMO being that, from a legal standpoint, there is no prize. You "win" things or get drops but the TOS of all games say that the player does not own them (or anything else in the game) in any legal sense. The analogy would be more like a carnival ride where you are paying for the experience rather than the expectation of getting anything material in return.

Yet loads of people sell their in-game items (that they got through chance) for real money. So in a sense, they do own them.

More problematicly, im not sure how youd stop it from extending to say WoW gold-selling, or even cartridges with 100% saves on them.

People will attribute value to anything for any number of reasons, but I’m not sure you can make regulation on anything beyond “encouraging” such behavior. (And I would assume these companies already actively discourage it; you’re not supposed to be able to get money back out of the system!)

There are some game developers looking at sanctioned RMT right now because it would be a huge selling point. "Make money playing video games" used to be a popular slogan on tacky banner ads. That could see a comeback in a different way.

Sanctioned RMT works through some official marketplace (think Diablo 3's ill-fated Auction House). Not only does the developer not pay out anything (all money flowing through the auction house is coming from buyers of items), but they even take a "transaction fee" cut. All while continuing to own all the items being traded. There's no downside for the "house".

Except perhaps suddenly running afoul of gambling regulations if they can no longer argue there's no "prize" element to the gambling?

We're well past the point where virtual entitites are imaginable by the general populace.

Getting a virtual gun, creates an actual advantage in the game your are playing online.

While ultimate ownership of the code may be fraught, but practical day to day ownership and usage is not (unless you are fighting a particularly contrived case).

On one hand, this may be enough to consider it gambling for money.

On the other hand, many games may expressly forbid selling in-game stuff. This is not easy to enforce, though, unless you forbid to drop and pick up items, or make in-game exchanges. A number of games uses exchange as a important "social" / "multiplayer" feature, but likely those are not slot-machine-like anyway.

Done.

I believe if I had a slot machine that paid out in free vacations instead of cash, there would be no doubt playing it is a form of gambling.

I think it’s that the micropayments don’t get a random return. When someone buys to complete a level it is a predictable outcome, not a gamble.

People get variable return on item drops, but you don’t generally pay with money for item drops, just time.

There is a one-step-removed way in which I think video games could be regarded as a kind of indirect or obscured gambling.

1-I pay to receive an in game item like a weapon

2-I use that investment to go out and kill monsters for treasure drops

3-I end up with some randomly variable items of value that are by definition valuable, because people will pay me for them, TOS doesn’t establish a thing’s market value.

But I think this would really require us rethinking or redefining a number of concepts.

Would that not closely match this example, at least in terms of utility?

If the state wins, it could result in an expansion of regulation of this type of mobile game.

Here's an article with some more detail.

https://www.geekwire.com/2018/game-show-network-hit-online-g...

The regulations were designed for casinos before video games became so popular and way before mobile games and micro-transactions even existed.

Example of gambling regulation for New Jersey: https://www.nj.gov/oag/ge/docs/Regulations/MergedRegulations...

> Is that a state-by-state regulation?

Yes. Delaware, Nevada, New Jersey and Pennsylvania allow gambling. But I guess that at any moment local or federal regulations could be created.

> And does the regulating code specifically mention physical machines?

There is specific regulations for casinos, for on-line gambling, for jackpots, sports betting, etc. e.g. CHAPTER 69O INTERNET AND MOBILE GAMING from the linked PDF

Example of definitions:

* "Authorized Internet or mobile game" means any game authorized by the Division for use with an Internet or mobile gaming system.

* "Client terminal" means any device that is used to interact with a gaming system for the purpose of conducting server-based gaming activity.

* "Data warehouse" means a system of one or more servers located in New Jersey for the purpose of storing transactions received from the primary gaming equipment.

* "Dormant account" means an Internet gaming account, which has had no patron initiated activity for a period of one year.

I did in the 1970's, and it's perfectly legal (roulette, not slots):

https://www.ebay.com/p/Las-Vegas-Roulette-Intellivision-1980...

That you are never forced to pay is a defining aspect of “freemium”. You are always given the choice to wait out the timer/watch an ad for your next upgrade/level/continue/bonus/lootbox, rather than pay.

In the US you can't build a slot machine that accepts money and dispenses tokens that have value. That's often how things operate in Japan, but the same model is generally illegal in the US.

It's questionable if spending real money on virtual currency to buy "loot boxes" that randomly give things of value is legal. And if that's legal, it's not obvious if changing the rate of rewards is legal.

EX: People buying WoW gold.

IIRC, Blizzard doesn't profit from that directly and explicitly prohibits it in their ToS.

I could go on, but saying it's virtual is not necessarily enough to protect these companies.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-04-25-now-belgium-de...

Probably because the problem is not perceived as bad enough to get regulated yet. The industry was getting dangerously close to this when there were all those cases of kids racking up huge bills through in-app purchases on iPhones, but that has died down enough that it's not on the radar anymore. I think if the games industry gets too aggressive again, regulation will sweep in.

If a game has micro transactions, then treat it as gambling.

Problem solved.

Not because they are boring, but because they are less addictive than they can be. So they are "boring" in comparison. If we were allowed to use all tricks that mobile and on-line games do it will be really bad for society as it will create more addiction.

It is like Coca-Cola. Even that so much sugar makes it problematic, I find it better that at least does not include cocaine like it did in 1891. Does that make Coca-Cola good? No, it does not. But I find that makes it a lesser evil. Even that cocaine-less Coke is more "boring" nowadays, it is the right thing to do.

I have seen people putting shit ton of money into those machines and they lost easily 100,- Euros per Hour?

I'm sure there is always a white/gray/black thing going on but i do put a slot machine at the very end of black not in gray or white at all.

Coca Cola and the water stealing and the addiction is btw. an additional example for something not that good, it does not make a slot machine any better.

I am talking about basic stuff like:

* Push notifications reminding you that you should play the game.

* Let you win some money but then lose it unless you make a payment.

* A bar that fills faster at the beginning and then starts to fill slower. So it looks like you are closer to a goal that you actually are.

* Show a deck of cards that instead of the 52 standard cards, expected by the players, has another configuration that makes you lose more often.

etc.

Any mobile games video - like https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014450/Behavioral-Economics-a... - has a lot of forbidden techniques for on-line gambling.

[0]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement#Intermittent_rei...

https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/6/8544303/casino-slot-machin...

I do not get this. slots pay out (RTP Return To Player) is around 90%. The article mixes volatility with RTP.

> Lower-volatility games often have greater appeal in 'locals markets' than in destination resort markets like Las Vegas or Atlantic City

This looks correct.

> During "flow," time speeds up (hours feel like minutes) or slows down (reactions can be made instantly) and the mind reaches a state of almost euphoric equilibrium.

Most sensible regulations force you to send reminders to the players that interrupt this flow. On-line betting usually has harder regulations, as to play in a casino you need to physically get there but on-line is always available.

Usually in high regulated markets each spin should last at least 3 seconds. This is so you cannot get a fast continuous flow, but the pace is forcefully slowed down.

Physical casino slots and on-line slots are slightly different as products and regulation wise.

> "People only have so much leisure time and there’s a lot of activity on iPhones"

Slot machines are competing against Candy Crush (and Royal Charm Slots from the same company), Netflix, YouTube, etc.

> Eyal criticized slot machines for what he said was a business model dependent on addicted players — "that industry, I have a problem with," he said.

And the solution is to regulated it in a way that the most addictive aspects are not possible to implement. Or to prohibit it completely, not just to move it underground. If anyone expects that the industry is going to regulate itself they are for a hard ride. No industry does that for real.

Likewise, it's fine if he wants to watch the videos we've taken of our family, it helps him to remember relatives we don't get to see very often.

Conversely, I have ZERO tolerance for advertising. I am increasingly convinced that marketing is the source of a majority of modern society's ills and I don't want it anywhere near his brain until he's able to properly comprehend its purpose.

I'm not a gamer so I don't know much about Zelda, but the sort of hypnotic hold some Youtube/Insta personalities have on kids is astonishing. They will parrot their talking points, talk about them relentlessly with friends and buy whatever they're shilling, be it makeup, game guides, phone skins, what have you.

TV, movies, and games are forms of entertainment. Advertising is a form of manipulation.

Sure, the lines can be blurred, so we do our best to filter out the bad intentions.

Modern advertising seems to become more effective as well. I never anticipated a defense of ads, but I've actually been criticized by visiting relatives for keeping commercials out of reach of our family. We're "out of the loop" now, unable to relate to a joke or situation delivered by commercial. And around holidays and birthdays, we get asked "How do your kids even know what they want without commercials?"

I think modern games absolutely do harm, I don’t think they should really be called games either, because they are build for addiction to make you play their built in slot machines.

My children never had smart devices because nobody under 15 should ever touch a smart device. They grew up much healthier than their peers and I think it was the strict rules on technology that did most of the work.

I’m not against technology or smart devices by any means, but it’s hard to use both in a healthy manner and children are really bad at making the right decision.

I mean, you wouldn’t give your kid free reign in the candy store, so why would you do it on their smartphone?

I'm noticing this among my cousins, at least among social health. I've got one cousin who just entered 7th grade this year, and might be the only person in her class without a phone. One of her best friends just got one at the beginning of the year. Those two are among the only two who actually know how to talk and have a conversation; other kids have no clue how to read tone of voice to tell jokes, or have any clue how to read facial expressions, etc. They honestly say what they want, when they want, without regards to people and then can't interpret that someone is upset.

I've noticed it especially in regards to my 11 year old cousin, who's now had his phone for 3 years. He doesn't pick up on tone in jokes, and so unless the joke has an obvious punch line, he doesn't really get it. He has a lot of one-word conversations, often in a brusque tone, because he just wants to watch Minecraft videos. Often, the first thing he'll do when he gets to my grandmother's from school is go to her bedroom, lock the door, and just watch videos. No interaction whatsoever, and good luck trying to get him to talk.

I also see it to a much more dangerous degree among my high school students. The lengths they will go to to be on their phones during class (and not even to chat; merely to be on them) is, quite frankly, alarming. I fear for our future, and am looking at dumb phones for myself now (I'll keep my dual sim smartphone for when I travel outside the country and exercise because music)

(Someone else said that some fifty years ago, but Cook's quote is what comes up now in a quick search ...)

For instance 7 year olds develop at different paces, there's definitely a lot of 7 year olds without phones who don't know how to have a conversation, and it may be due to lack of practice, not due to excessive screen time - those two may overlap but are not the same thing.

Likewise, an 11 year old who likes minecraft may not be the social butterfly you expect if you take away his access to games.

Agree that phones maybe a potential candidate for social health concerns though.

And while he might not be tla social butterfly, I don't think it's difficult to say technology access is impacting his ability to develop socially fairly negatively. This is supported by quite a bit of research.

Or just not letting kids get into those games. At some point my wife pointed out that I had a problem disengaging from certain types of games (for me it was MOBAs specifically). They are super-addictive.

It never really got in the way of anything and if I had anything else to do I would go do that, so it wouldn't really qualify as "addiction" in a DSM sense. But the issue is what it does when you don't have anything to do. They have a way of swallowing up basically ALL of your free time. And I didn't feel happier or better off for having spent my time that way, it felt more like compulsion than desire. I see a lot of young people on the internet being enslaved by compulsion like this, engaging in somewhat problematic consumption of video-games, porn, or social media.

I decided to just uninstall and stop playing those sorts of games, but I was also a grown-up with life experiences, hobbies, social connections, and responsibilities before I ever started. I knew what I was missing with "real life" by letting myself sink into that so it was easy enough for me to stop, I had other, more edifying sources of dopamine to go after. Kids, often times, either don't have enough freedom of movement to go do those things or just plain don't know what else there is out there. It's the same reason drug and gambling addiction tends to take hold among people with depression.

It robs a child’s body and brain from developing social and motor skills in a 3D world. Time spent in the trance state is habit forming and is in general stolen from time spent exploring the world, and letting the brain learn from full bandwidth experiences.

So yes, It is the screen.

Children’s real life unstructured full-bandwidth play is learning on steroids. All systems engaged, constant observation, endless questions, simulations etc. think social simulations, physical and motor skills challenges, puzzles. It takes life to prepare human brains for life.

In 'old school' game you receive reward after period of effort. You have to perform better and push yourself. Game is designed to be fun but selling the game once is where the money is. Good game is measured by the short peak experiences, not by the average feeling.

Another (more advanced but evil) way to design addictive game is when it the difficulty and reward frequencies are optimized to keep you playing for as long as possible. You are offered cheats or the difficulty automatically adjusts to optimize the time you spend with the game. The goal of the game is stretch the interest over time just above the threshold where you would quit. In the end the game just removes lows from the boring moments.

I have no doubt video game addiction will at some point become an actual diagnosis, just like gambling addiction.

You can still find the oldschool-style. I.e. I just played CHUCHEL adventure game alongside my 4 year old, and it is a simple ~4 hour long adventure game, costs ~10$, no micro-transactions funny business.

Reminds me of my time at my grandma's house playing Neverhood :D

Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe still works on modern machines.

Shovel knight, Tooth and Tail, Guacamele, Into The Breach, Shadowrun, Reigns, Abzu, Magicka, Undertale ... and many more. Of course, not many FPS/high-budget rpgs?

I actually am strongly considering to be the first in my family to buy an actual gaming console, once my daughter is a tiny bit older. Nintendo with its Switch lineup seems to be quite in line with the old-school mentality of "Pay once, get the game, have fun" :-)

Right... the game is designed to hook you in, that's games, they've all done that since the year dot. You're invested. Except now, in order to continue getting the same high, you need to spend money. They're purposely engineered this way. Just like drugs.

I grew up as the public internet took it's first breaths. When you had to figure out just how to get an internet service provider before you could even get started. In the era of IRC and Newsgroups and that was about all. Nobody even understood what websites were.

Google didn't hit its stride until 3 or 4 years after I started using it. Things were different back then.

These days everything is designed to hook you and keep you coming back and when those hooks are no longer enough to keep your eyes on it, it hooks you to pay something to get more of a high.

My kids have just come off a two week iPad ban yesterday, and already one of them has fallen off the rails and was unable to get out of bed for school this morning. Their behaviour was significantly improved by the time they came off their ban than it was the day the were banned.

I'm seriously considering removing iPad use on a more permanent basis.

Interestingly, that’s going back to video gaming’s roots in the arcade.

But yes, I agree with your point in the general sense!

Buy older computers (1980s/early 1990s) that don't provide access to those games or the internet.

I don't know if modern laptops can do this (modern ultra-portables can't because everything is soldered in), but I recently took the wifi card out of my (ancient) T61, it required only taking out screws[0] and disconnecting the daughter board, so that I would have a machine without always-on-internet. Haven't had much use of it, but sitting in front of it, I have caught myself starting up chrome...

[0] sadly I failed to keep track of which goes where, but that is also the only issue.

Loot crates, which are basically slot machines, don't exist. You buy what you see, a skin.

They make a lot of money from skins but once again, there's no in-game advantage. It's purely cosmetic so at the end of the day even if you don't give Epic a dime you're still on a level playing field with everyone else.

Quake and diablo 2 / 3 - no loot boxes.

Screen time modifies your behavior. That modification is compounded as the quantity of access time increases. This change is determinate and quantifiable.

You can quickly validate this with a simple experiment. Take any child and take away access to screens. Look at what they do to fill their time and how they respond to people in the first 30 minutes after screen loss and against after 2 hours. Also notice the longer term modifications to behavior after screens are removed for a week.

Part of this is a component of addiction, missing social stimulus, and lack of physical activity.

Being involved changes a lot, making agreements, talk about feelings and evaluating. So like you would with any activity.

Let they play but add mandatory walks i.e., or mix up with physical actvities. I mean, kids don't have THAT much time at hand to spend after school.

I'm now playing Crossout, where you can build your own car, and my son also loves building his own cars and fighting with them.

I don't think you have to look at it so negative, kids actually enjoy creating stuff in games, and I think that's a good thing.

Source: I have 6 kids between the ages of 9 and 16

There's a increase of 'frequency' at the expense of depth.

In the old days, the focus was on playability. Games were fun. But a new genre has emerged particularly in mobile gaming that does something strange: it compels play even when it isn't fun anymore. In the old days when a game stopped being fun, you would stop playing. But these games, when they stop being fun, you make an in-game purchase...

That's the power of positive and negative reinforcement. They want to shape the behavior of players. They want players logging into the game multiple times a day, every single day.

So they rate limit the player's game with "stamina" or whatever euphemism for a timer they come up with. Player was having fun playing the RPG with friends, only to run out of "stamina"! The choice is to stop and wait for the timer to reset or pay money to reset it. Then the player starts waking up at 3 in the morning because that's when the timer resets.

The simple timer reinforces a schedule and creates the behavior the game developer wants players to have.

This is a common technique for manufacturing commitment: if a person must suffer for a thing, they come to justify to themselves that the thing is worth the suffering, and become more dedicated the more they do. Cults often use this technique.

But I've seen so many similar games where the game itself wasn't fun at all, even though the rewards were still enticing. The Simpsons Tapped Out comes to mind. And in those cases I realized the game play itself wasn't interesting or fun and quickly quit. Basically, any game that has timers in it will fall into this category because the timers are there solely to make sure you keep coming back and have a compelling reason to do it often.

People said the same thing about WoW and Everquest and pretty much every video game. Go back far enough people said the same thing about nintendo and gameboy. Every generation thinks they are unique. You aren't unique. Your father thought the exact same thing as you are thinking right now. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

> Not sure what the fix is either, other than ruthless enforcement of quotas.

How about being a parent rather than blaming games. It's always human nature to blame others for one's own failings.

Now it's social media and smartphone games. Before that it was people were blaming video games, simpsons, south park, mtv, etc for violence, dumbing down kids, etc. In 10 years, it'll be something else. Maybe virtual reality or sex dolls. Who knows. The same complaints, different products.

Social interaction will inherently set off more chemical rewards, but it is the tuning of the feedback loop (optimizing for micro-interactions) that keeps us glued.

Emacs/mutt/libreoffice/python/kodi have not been adversarily tuned to fire off the reward centers of our brains just enough to keep us returning for more. Whereas on the same exact screen, firefox/chromium are gateways to madness.

Indeed, some of those could desperately use a little polish to stop firing off the pain centers of our brains. :\

In this instance, the medium is not the message. Books, movies, etc. don't suddenly become more addictive just because they're on glowing rectangles. The glowing rectangles enable additional, potentially-addictive experiences that weren't possible without them—but you as a parent have complete ability to disable these experiences. A glowing rectangle that can "only" function as a library, encyclopedia, movie theatre, radio, and (if you like) chatroom, is still a useful possession, but likely not an addictive one.

If you're able to wrest control, you can have good experiences in sketchy apps. For example:

• Facebook with no Pages, just friends, sorted in chronological mode, and only subscribed to the particular friends that you actually want to know how they're doing.

• YouTube, but only for videos you find linked on some other place than YouTube; and then maybe subscribing to those videos' authors, and then directly checking your "latest updates" feed.

However, you can't really force kids to use these apps this way, and every step of these apps' workflows is trying to lead you out of this usage and back into their "idiomatic" recommendation-based one. So maybe better not to expose kids to the potential. (Or just give them an alternative interface without the drug-dealers-on-the-street-corners, e.g. YouTube videos discovered via an RSS reader, downloaded using youtube-dl, and loaded into Plex.)

I feel like dumping a kid into the deep end of linux box with access some so-so games installed and letting them figure out how to make things work is extremely valuable learning experience. It's the "passive" screen behaviors that are harmful IMO.

It will have connection but iptables will block everything. If they ever figure out how to disable that they are ready :) Man pages and other docs will be there for them to enjoy.

I will also buy some printed books for python, shell etc

They gona fucking hate me, but I am not feeding them equivalent of cocaine.

I agree that computer knowledge is a must, but I think time is spent more wisely if they are aware of the concepts and how mundane they actually are. (I.e., programming and scripts are not arcane stuff)

At the high level, I think we will see a more divergence / degeneralization of devices [0]. Your "phone" should be a separate item from your social media procrasturbation device. We all want some form of the latter, just not buzzing in our pocket.

In the middle? That's the (zero) million dollar question.

(I hope the next wave will be via repurposing older hardware with a Free and surveillance-resistant operating environment, but my fingers are crossed!)

The good screen is the one at a desk that you sit at to do work with conscious intention.

YouTube used to be a lot more dangerous with their sidebar recommendations years ago but they changed the algorithm at some point and ever since it’s become very rare that I click on anything there.

1. They are massively produced and have replaced many other programs. There is always new content available, you can spend your life watching 3 new episodes an evening.

2. They are in fact not series any more, but serials. Each episode of a series has an independent storyline and comes to a conclusion; episodes can mostly be watched in random order, you can miss a broadcast, it doesn't matter, you can watch a later episodes without any problem. Serials are a single long storyline split in episodes: you can't miss one, let alone two episodes, otherwise you're lost; and they can use cliffhangers! and of course they do. The hooking is much much bigger for serials than for series, you always end up begging for more.

Even when it starts as a series, they quickly inject enough serials elements to turn it into a serial in disguise.

So, making good content that happens to span multiple episodes? That's the kind of engagement I really don't have an issue with.

However—Netflix has autoplay next episode turned on by default, and if you find the setting to turn it off, each episode ends with a large screen prompting you to PLEASE click to play the next episode. As someone who really likes episodes to end cleanly and give me time to think, this REALLY annoys me.

No, it doesn't mean "good content" at all (it can accidentally be good content, but that's not usually the case). It means the ability to use tricks to get you hooked, to have you craving for more, and to trigger binge behaviour, no matter what the content is. There was no such binge consumption before, and there was no request for new content all the time, you could watch a random episode of a 10 or 20 years old series and you were fine with it.

On the contrary, with serials the writers/directors don't have to think about setting up a story that can start, develop and end in 42 minutes, which requires crafting.

They can patch whichever background story (love, treason, ...) that we have seen 800 times already, and activate it when they have no other idea on where the actual story should go. Even 'better', they activate it just 30 seconds before the end of the episode, so that, dammit! I wanted to stop there and go to sleep / do something else but I click on the next episode, and there we go, again, and again.

> However—Netflix has autoplay next episode turned on by default, and if you find the setting to turn it off, each episode ends with a large screen prompting you to PLEASE click to play the next episode. As someone who really likes episodes to end cleanly and give me time to think, this REALLY annoys me.

Well yeah, because the point of serials is to have people binge watch them, so the most common action is to watch an episode after another after another, and the publisher wants to facilitate this and makes you binge watch as much as possible.

He doesn't care if after watching 3 episodes you don't even remember the 1st one, he doesn't want to have clear ending, clear breaks that would give you the possibility to reflect and digest the episode, the point is to keep the flow going non-stop and occupy as much of your time as possible.

I think where I draw the line with Netflix compared to Facebook or Youtube is twofold:

1) Netflix does not have such a wealth of content that they micro-target my individual psyche†. When I watch Stranger Things, I don't feel like I'm being manipulated, and I feel satisfied with the time I spent when I'm done.

2) As long as I maintain my subscription, Netflix makes the same amount of money regardless of how much or little time I spend on their service. So I feel as though my interests are generally aligned with theirs.

And, this may be neither here nor there, but I inherently like serials, and have since I was a child. I just spent nearly two years reading the Wheel of Time novels and becoming super immersed in that fantasy world. Longer and slower paced stories aren't necessarily paced poorly, although they certainly can be‡.

†They can do more subtle things like adjust a show's poster image, but at least that doesn't affect the content.

‡Wheel of Time specifically has massive pacing issues, and thus may not have been the best example here.

I have two adult sons. They were online as early as ages 2 and 5. I beg to differ and all that.

If kids are being ignored and not getting their needs adequately met, etc, then what happens online can have a huge adverse impact on them. But I don't think this is a problem we solve by trying to "fix software." This is a problem we solve by trying to fix social fabric.

Now we're dealing with websites/apps that have been explicitly designed to addict mature adults, playing people as pawns against one another. I'm familiar with the idea of "Rat Park" [0], but I think even if we can be absolutely sure kids' needs are being met it would be naive to rely on it.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park

I don't think FOSS is even necessary for what I'm talking about (although it seems to be sufficient). Non-networked binary distribution of yore was also (mostly) aligned with the interests of its users.

It's much more related to who is paying the bills. Technical concerns do make some difference, but are eclipsed by the money question.

Our current problem is that people mostly don't pay for software anymore. So we are left with FOSS and anti-user software.

I've long pondered if an economy around Free software could be better implemented. We take it as a forgone conclusion that wide source code availability precludes charging per-instance, but really that's just an assumption.

Of course the idea is likely moot in the light of network effects, which seem to be a major underlying factor of the current harsh dichotomy.

(b) can be done with a proposition in the State of California and a few million spent on a very convincing ad campaign ("Vote yes on Proposition 42 to take back total control of your computing devices! Don't let advertisers and data leeches control and dictate your life from behind the curtain!"). California because it's home to a big chunk of Big Tech, and because it's a market too big to simply ignore and not sell into.

The flip side is all of this device churn is all the actually devices left in the wake, available for cheap/free. If software is done right, even last-decade specs are perfectly capable devices good for another decade. Which is what we need, because convincing someone to pave over their current device or spend a lot on a new "weird" one isn't going to happen. Tablets got a foothold by being a new type of device, rather than an immediate replacement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Well_Spent

Oh my god, what hyperbole. This is like the cringey hyperbole equating rock 'n roll with devil music back in the 50s.

Things will be fine. Every older generation thinks the newer generation is "mad". It's not the end of the world.

Is hacker news mostly grandparents now? Just worried about every new technology? So many comments here feel like my grandparents talking.

It's so sad how old and scared HN has gotten. HN isn't supposed to be like it.

I don’t think all of HN is like this, it’s more about who was attracted to the headline.

I'm actually commenting based on my own experience and perception, not some abstract panic about "the children". I'm obviously typing this from a web browser, with both of us using this site that is not user hostile yet still creates a dopamine procrastination loop. HN specifically has had a noprocrast feature forever, for a quite real reason.

There certainly does appear to be a recent media panic, but unfortunately societal feedback suffers from heavy hysteresis. Is it sensible to dismiss the fallout from Snowden based on the prevailing wisdom of 2010 that most everybody is fine with surveillance? People who actually care say "about time" rather than "no news here".

As technologists, we see through the technicals rather than abstracting them as magic. There has been a very real social change in the past decade whereby computers aren't functioning as people's agents but rather remote agents of companies with their own diverging interests. Ignoring the implications and symptoms of this setup, especially as a trite "every generation has concerns", is just basic ignorance.

Go read a book or some studies about attention. It's not mindless fear-mongering.

I also remember what it was like to be a metalhead in the 80s.

This is still mostly mindless fear mongering. Sometimes it also is about parents who have had problems parenting kids that slipped into addictive behavior patterns, and blaming the thing rather than just engaging with human nature.

I have two kids, they use screens (with some reasonable limits), and they’re doing fine, but we need to be watchful and actively engaged in their screen use to ensure they know how to to put it down. Some kids needed extreme interventions, I get that. But addictive things aren’t bad things necessarily, they can be very good things in moderation. The world is a big place with more to do than screens. I don’t understand why thy extremes some rich SV families have had to implement is now some kind of “consensus”. The hell there is consensus.

The screen also offers a rich world of its own and ample opportunity for personal advancement. Children need to learn how to manage it for their own ends. Thankfully both of my kiddos seem to be able to put the screen down after a bit and go outside to play.

Here is the report on Technology Addiction: https://www.commonsensemedia.org/research/technology-addicti...

Here is our other research reports covering a wide range of media/technology topics effecting children, families and teachers: https://www.commonsensemedia.org/research?page=1

Since I work from home on a computer all day, it seemed wrong to send mixed messages about screen usage. One trick we use is to set Alexa timers when starting screen time with our preschool and kindergarteners. You can argue with mom and dad, but Alexa is implacable. Also, the play room must be cleaned up and homework done, which seems to provide the “privilege, not a right” context we are looking for. It helps we have far better behaved kids in general that I have any right to expect. I blame my wife.

Your website helped me get control over what my wife and parents were exposing my four year old daughter to, by establishing a neutral source of extremely valuable information. It became very easy to set guidelines thanks to your rating system and the wide range of titles reviewed.

The new 3D animation style and cutesy animal characters are dangerously subversive. My mom thought I was being a grinch until I made her read a review from CSM of the Alvin and the Chipmunks movie she wanted to show my daughter:

"There was a scene where the male Air Marshall (who was following them), woke up in a drunken haze (yes, there was a scene where shots and drinks were involved) with 2 new tattoos and in the bedroom or hotel room with another man (and all that that implied)."

There is just no way this stuff is age appropriate. I don't care how far the Overton window has shifted.

The Illumination Studios pictures are particularly insidious. I believe their content is generally inappropriate for young children, deleterious to moral character, culturally degenerate, etc. The character design aesthetics are offensive and stupefying. I wasn't surprised to find the same creative oversight involved in the duff Chipmunks pictures.

Case in point is Sing, which when I looked it up, it turns out the movie is notorious for culturally stereotyped presentation of Japanese people, and animal singers who shake their butts around. There's no way young children can appropriately contextualize either of these things.

This appears to be a PG rated movie. This is nothing new. Let's take a step back nearly 25 years and check out things that happen in 'The Nightmare Before Christmas', a movie with the same rating:

Finkelstein makes himself a female doll. A detached leg is used to seduce a villain, whom promptly begins to engage in foot play. There is a torture chamber crossed with a casino, where the casino games determine the level of torture inflicted. There's a skinned head, various detached body parts, brains, etc.

Let's go back farther! Watership Down - 40 years ago.

Doe rabbits fancied by one of the villains are offered up in compensation for his efforts. References to the needs of doe rabbits to sustain the warren Various bits of violence/gore with the rabbits, including a rabbit choking on a snare and coughing up blood Mild profanity - use of 'Damn' and 'Piss', with Fuck replaced with 'Frisk' in several instances.

>There is just no way this stuff is age appropriate. I don't care how far the Overton window has shifted.

PG as a rating is specifically not any sort of indication to age appropriateness. Emotional development of children in the ages in question is going to vary drastically, and the whole point is that it is then suggested that the parents, knowing best what content their children will be able to handle, make the decision. The maturity level of content in PG movies has, if anything, dropped over the years.

Note that I am not questioning your choices on what you find appropriate for your children, just your interpretation of what PG means and whether or not the Overton window has shifted.

Both your examples are about fantastical violence and/or animal predator/prey violence - things that have little or no connection to a kid's real life growing up. It's not hard to dissociate real life from a casino torture chamber and a skinned head. What influence could this have on a child - make him make his own casino torture chamber?

Grandparent complained about normalization of heavy drinking, tattooing, casual sex, deviant sex, dangerous sex, and related forms of degenerate behavior. These are things that kids must deal with growing up, and which they will be tempted to participate in, to their own detriment. It's totally different and much more insidious than cartoon or animal predator/prey violence.

What evidence is there that normalizing violence is less problematic to a child?

>heavy drinking,

Sure, that's not a great thing to normalize.

>tattooing,

What's wrong with tattoos?

>casual sex,

Again, something suggested in other PG movies from farther back. If your kids can handle it, they can watch it. If not, don't let them. That's what PG has always meant. It's not graphic, it doesn't show any of the foreplay, therefor it fits with the standard of PG that has existed forever.

>deviant sex,

Wait, what? Two men having sex is now deviant sex? Uh, yeah, not gonna agree there.

>dangerous sex,

Again, because it's two men? Where are you going with this?

>and related forms of degenerate behavior.

The only degenerate behavior on this list is the heavy drinking, and even that is being fairly generous to you - plenty of people have nights where they drink heavily and aren't degenerate and don't let it impact their life.

>It's totally different and much more insidious than cartoon or animal predator/prey violence.

You're making pretty huge statements here without any evidence to back it up. I don't know how much of an impact that the sort of scene in Alvin and the Chipmunk's would have on a child - I would guess probably not much, as much of the implications discussed are likely to fly right over their head - but we do know that violence, even cartoon violence, has an affect on children. http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/child-adolescent-psychiatry/...

PG movies have had this sort of content for decades. PG has never meant 'You can just show any of your young kids this.' - that is what the G rating is for. PG has always meant that there are things that you might find questionable for your child and that your parental discretion should be exercised. It's not insidious.

(To be honest, I’d go further and claim that a lot of adults don’t grasp the consequences of tattoos either).

But kids also shouldn't drive, and no one is calling for movies with people driving to receive a rating higher than PG ;)

I'm being facetious here, but only a little - the point shouldn't be to eliminate any behavior we don't want kids to emulate from the media they consume. It's simply not possible.

For a four year old? Sure, the MPAA PG rating fairly firmly indicates that the film contains material likely not appropriate for young children.

> I don't care how far the Overton window has shifted.

The content allowed for any given MPAA rating has generally gotten less extreme over time, rather than shifting the other way.

(And, to parents here who aren't familiar with their movie reviews and other resources, check them out: https://www.commonsensemedia.org/ )

Movie and TV reviews have gotten so hung up on performance, star power and visuals that they give us parents very little idea about content. They’re useless in many cases.

I feel like common sense media is an amazing tool for those of us that are concerned with the content in media and helps parents make better decisions.

I view tech similarly to how I view sex-ed in 2018: it's been proven that if you do abstinence only education then bad things happen (teen pregnancies, stds, etc...). Your kids are going to grow up to be adults with bad tech habits if you don't start teaching them how to use it responsibly and protect themselves early.

Help them find good content. Have days where no tech is allowed on the weekends, but don't keep them away from it completely. Give them time to unwind with tech and choose stuff themselves, just as you probably do. Teach them about privacy and the problems that can come up with tech so they know how to deal with it themselves. Teach them that too much tech isn't good for you and you need to do other things too.

Monitor what they're watching and make sure you talk to them when things get out of hand. Expect to have some occasional issues, and treat them like you would an adult: are they sad? Is something going on at school? Is the tech affecting their ability to do other things at the time?

Eventually your kid is going to use tech. Teach them early how to be responsible with it.

And how are you supposed to teach kids about privacy when most consumer technology from the get-go is privacy harming? If you buy a child their first smartphone, do you tell them to not use SMS because it's plaintext, to not use any of the popular communications apps because they're owned by FB or whoever else, or to not use their phone at all because of cellular location tracking? How to you explain to them they can't watch Netflix on the TV, because the TV isn't allowed to connect to the internet to prevent it phoning home? No, convenience trumps all, and we all know the current state of things is that even if people are made aware of privacy issues, they'll disregard them if even slightly inconvenient.

There is no responsible way to "teach" consumer technology, at least not the way you mention. I mean, how exactly is the generalization "too much tech isn't good" relevant to technology? This is just common sense, it applies to everything. If kids are staying up late reading comic books and subsequently performing poorly in school, this is no different than the habit of staying up late on your phone. And, I reiterate, the latter has nothing to do with technology but with consumption. You either foster a (ever-growing) dependency in them, or you don't. And as you write, the former is inevitable, but then so is a lack of privacy, and so are the bad habits that are inherent to consumer technology.

Your kid is eventually going to have a communication device. You have to embrace the dangers of that and teach them about the issues they'll face and the compromises they'll have to make when using it. That doesn't mean you disable Netflix, but that does mean you can teach them about how the internet works, how companies make money off advertising and data, and that there are still ways to protect themselves to reduce risks. Your 2nd paragraph is all things I cover with my kids.

"No, convenience trumps all"

No, this is not what we should teach our kids. Compromises may be acceptable, but that doesn't mean convenience trumps all. One other avenue to explore is how our government can and should do more to make it harder for companies to abuse people in the name of convenience. That's not something that they do a good job of now, but hey, better education for people is part of the point we're discussing. Luddites don't even know the right questions to ask.

"There is no responsible way to "teach" consumer technology"

I disagree, but also don't think we have a choice. Either you learn better ways to teach your kids about tech, or you'll continue to have a system that abuses tech.

"This is just common sense, it applies to everything."

Tech risks are not common sense though outside Silicon Valley. I agree some of the tech problems are more about consumerism, in general, but there are plenty of issues that aren't just that. Avoiding tech won't stop those particular issues.

"And as you write, the former is inevitable, but then so is a lack of privacy, and so are the bad habits that are inherent to consumer technology."

There will always be risks and compromises with interacting with tech. Going back to my sex-ed analogy, there are also risks with sex, but we learn to wear condoms and practice safe sex to minimize those risks. This idea that we can't teach safer risk mitigation strategies for tech also is silly: ad blockers, privacy blockers, better password and identity management, how and when to share personal information, government and legal interventions. All of these are things that affect tech use and should be taught.

Yet you sneer at it, calling it Luddism.

You missed the point. It's not that there's FUD around tech. It's that the people who understand tech the most (see the headline) are restricting children's access to it more than you (the general reader) might realize.

We have a pretty standard schedule:

- Tech off at 6pm every night and during dinners

- After school till 6 is basically free for all time if they don't have other obligations, which I count as decompression from the day. They hang out with neighbors too.

- Weekends we allow tech, but only if it's educational programming or they're creating something (arts, crafts, stop motion, game programming), so it's a bit more strict.

YMMV, of course.

it's been proven that if you do abstinence only education then bad things happen

How about driving technology? Children receive abstinence-only education on driving until they turn 15 or 16.

There's plenty of precedent for young children being unable to safely & responsibly handle certain things.

Was it Luddism that I wasn't allowed to operate a table saw when I was eleven?

Nonsense. It is commonplace for children to be introduced to driving gradually, from a young age. They are made familiar with it in an observer capacity from approximately the time they are born. Children typically learn to manage unpowered vehicles like tricycles and bicycles within the first few years of their lives—often as soon as they're physically capable of riding them. There exist low-powered electric (toy) vehicles specifically designed for use by young children; for those a few years older, bumper cars and go-karts are popular amusements. There are even places where one can go (with parental consent and supervision) to practice driving real vehicles on private property.

The one thing they aren't permitted before age 15 or 16 is legal permission to drive proper vehicles on public roads. However, adults who haven't passed the driving exams are subject to exactly the same restrictions. Those restrictions are in place not because it is felt that driving is harmful for children but rather because their lack of experience would pose a safety risk for other users of the roads.

We know there are problems with ads, privacy, and subtle ways our "free" apps try to gain our attention. Kids are more capable than you may realize of understanding those issues too, and the sooner you work WITH them to learn those issues and how to counter them, the better.

Having said that, if a parent doesn't have a healthy relationship with tech themselves, they're going to have a hard time teaching their children.

>"We thought we could control it,” Mr. Anderson said. “And this is beyond our power to control. This is going straight to the pleasure centers of the developing brain. This is beyond our capacity as regular parents to understand."

A 6 year old's brain has no chance against a team of trained data scientists. We all know this.

This larger issue of screen time and tech addiction will only continue to grow. At some point maybe a decade or two it will be a smaller version of the concerns about the tobacco industry. But because it's the brain and not the lungs it will play out differently.

People approach mental and physical health differently. Similarly dopamine addiction and chemical dependence are also treated differently in people's minds. One is often viewed as a moral failing the other as more "uncontrollable".

As much as we want it to be true, technological advancement can never be separated from social/ethical impact. It's not "just a tool" and never will be.

Hell, I'd argue that many 40-50 year old brains clearly don't stand a chance against a trained data scientist.

I'd argue a prime-of-their-life 34 year old _data scientist_ doesn't stand a change _against their own algorithms_ if they immerse themselves. It's addiction.

We need to stop acting like it is "weak-minded" people (children is a dog-whistle for this) who are susceptible to tech addiction.

The idea of "standing a chance" is literally like saying you can consciously control your dopamine receptors to actively limit dopamine uptake in your brain.

I asked what she did... a game designer at Zynga.

If I see myself spending too much time on my phone, for instance, I'll put it away for a while.

This doesn't mean simply wishing an iron willpower on yourself, but one thing that worked wonders for me is modifying my environment to put barriers between me and bad things. I come from a family with a history of addiction and mental illness, and I think my personality can be a bit addictive along a variety of axes, but I consider my interactions with a host of addictive things (drugs, unhealthy food, screens, etc) to be pretty healthy. I know I have a sweet tooth and enjoy the occasional toke, so I don't keep junk food in the house; if I want anything unhealthier than cottage cheese, I can walk my high ass down to the store and get it. There are plenty of apps and extensions to limit screen time: zenscreen is good for mobile, feed eradicator for Facebook, blocksite for Reddit et al, YouTube has a setting to remind you to take a break after N minutes of watching, etc etc etc. I don't have any particular tricks for drugs, but I never developed the caffeine addiction most have because it was beyond crazy to me to start your day with feeding a physical and psychological addiction. [1].

I get that this pattern-matches to a hyper-individualist "external forces don't matter" take on the world, and it's not. But I think of it like defensive driving: feel free to dvocate for external changes and blame external forces, but when it comes down to it, you are the person who has the most invested in yourself and the person with the most power to change your habits. HN's historical fatalist consensus of all-powerful algorithms before which we can only cower in fear seems hugely counter-productive, and honestly a little silly.

[1] Caffeine is a particularly easy physical addiction to kick, given how brief and mild the withdrawal is. More powerfully physically addictive drugs like tobacco or heroin are in another category which I've avoided entirely, so I'm making no claims about them.

All these algorithms need to convince someone who is aware of their downsides is that the upsides are worth it. Instagram needs to convince someone that, sure Instagram isn't good for their mental health, but staying off Instagram means they will have less friends which will be worse for them. This will almost certainly work for a teenager. Other stuff may work for an adult.

And with the way social networks work, something like this can simply become a self fulfilling prophecy.

...

You just kinda ignored the whole point of the person you're replying too. This is an addiction, phone games or alcohol or lotto tickets, just because you can stop doesn't mean other people aren't addicted.

The opposite of love is not hate, it's apathy. The machines are optimized around numbers and parameters and have no idea what a person is or what a weakness is or what the concept of "weakness" means at all. They are statistical optimization algorithms designed to make one number get as close as possible to another number, by tweaking the values of a whole bunch of other numbers.

Like, a person who knew your weakness and had bad intentions would hone in on the weakness and then use it to manipulate you and take pleasure from interactions where you feel bad and they feel good. The computer is just existing at a higher level of ideas than your feelings, and will simply steam-roll your brain into mush as a minor side-effect of its effort to make that one number look like the other number.

These issues were being raised as far back as 2005-6 when debates were raging about whether likes/clicks/views and other "easy to collect" numbers were the right proxies for peoples needs and feelings. We know which camp prevailed.

What's changed is people's reaction and awareness. Hopefully we learn how to inject some love into the machine and dilute the apathy.

Look, these people are not working to protect you. They're working to create addictions and deepen existing ones. Frankly I think the medical types should lose their licenses for violation of the Hippocratic Oath: "First, do no harm" indeed. Making devices and software more ADDICTIVE, deliberately creating and encouraging mental illness (addiction) is a disgraceful violation of this oath.

This is an open secret in the video game world, to the point that some COUNTRIES are banning things like 'loot boxes' because they are naked gambling.

The problem began when users became the product being sold. Now the companies feel that they have a right to your mind and eyes, and are not above fostering or even creating clinical addiction to ensure they have access.

I lived in Russia during the time when slot machines were literally standing in the open on the streets, and yes, mentally infirm people were wasting themselves on them. Normal people did not.

It requires one to completely lack logic reasoning to not to understand that the the purpose of a slot machine is to waste his or her time and money.

The same way, it requires a particular lack of basic logical reasoning to not to understand that the the purpose of a smartphone app throwing 20 bling bling popups per second on you isn't different.

You don't need to be a genius to understand that clickfarming app must be removed, and to do so.

My former high school classmate who did not manage to leave Russia is running a typical "smartphone fixer" kiosk. He said few years ago that the most common request he gets from people is to "remove Google nagware and lock, block or delete Google Pay" so their child will never ever buy anything "in that Internet thing"

At least Chinese and Russian parents understood long ago that Google's business is all about "pocket slot machines (this is how people really call smartphones there)." Why wouldn't American parents do that too?

Casino — a business specifically mathematically engineered to make sure that nobody wins against a casino, to maximize your losses, and to make money from it. By the very definition, nobody "wins" against it. Yet, some people still come and play.

Same thing with google pocket slot machine — the very reason they link the game to your bank account is to milk money from you, or god forbid, your children.

Technology will always be "just a tool." By its nature, it is morally neutral. The use of technology for good or for evil reflects the morality of the people deploying it.

Explosives, baseball bats, water, radios, software. All have been used for noble purposes and for evil. That does not impart morality to the technology.

I think you've got it precisely the wrong way round: it is not the morality of the times that is reflected by the use of technology, but morality that reflects current technology.

The French and American revolutions that began the current age of modern democracy are, for example, unthinkable without the printing press. No newspaper, no democracy. It needed the equalising force of mass-copied text to abolish the sacred order of monarchy in people's heads. Similarly, it is hard to imagine fascism without the preceding inventions of radio and cinema. Or J.F.K. without television.

Culture, society, customs, morality - everything that has to do with what we call 'evil' or 'good' - is fundamentally a reflection of their surrounding media. Morals under the conditions of television will be different from morals under the condition of the world wide web.

One can see that we are currently struggling to adapt our morality to a new media reality by the invention of new words ("fake news", "filter bubble", "clickbait", "post-truth") to describe it; the old ones are insufficient.

I propose that rules and guidelines that emerged under the conditions of offline media will leave us vulnerable to the dark and dangerous sides of online media. We should develop new ones.

Before written systems, a message could only be spread by word. The message could be stopped by disappearing the person speaking.

Before print media, messages could only be written down by a scribe or learned person, and the message could only be read by another scribe or learned person. Or messages could only be passed in the form of images. Those messages could be stopped simply by burning/destroying the written/etched copy that existed.

Before the telegraph, messages could only be delivered in person, on foot or on horseback or by ship, limiting its rate of spread to those transportation speeds. Those messages could be stopped by intercepting the delivery, or controlling the territorial borders.

Before radio and telephone communications, transmitted messages could only be read by telegraphists. The messages could be stopped as long as there was no telegraphist at the time of message transmission, or if the telegraphist lied about the message.

Before televised media, only messages in the form of voice or text could be transmitted far distances, so only voice or text was consumed. The information bandwidth was extremely small, although fast.

Before internet media, only audio, video, or text could be transmitted. The information bandwidth increased with video, but these high information channels were only controlled by media elites and governments.

With internet media, internet isn't a message you consume, internet is something you participate in. The instant participation of the global population in a single activity is something altogether new that is a step-change in what has been available, and no prior medium could have prepared us for this age. The old media elites still want to control what messages are dispersed, but the new medium doesn't cede that control easily.

By that narrow definition, phones contain more than technology: they contain policy. A phone loaded with addictive games embodies a policy of maximizing screen time. A phone with clickbait on its lock screen is designed to take up your time and bathe your retinas in bullshit. While the transistors are neutral, the policy is harmful.

As it happens, these policies are often set by people that mostly work on technology, so they get lumped together. From outside, people see the technology industry being responsible for all of it.

- Everything has a potential of being addictive, but we focus so much on drugs since they have some especially addicting properties that aren't present in other habits.

- We're stuck with Enlightenment age thinking such as "tabula rasa" and we attribute too much human behavior to free will, an ill-defined term that nobody whom I ask can provide a comprehensive answer to.

McDonalds has marketed to children for the better part of a century (and it has followed many people into adulthood).

The medium has changed, but the practices are the same as Edward Bernays and Anna Freud cooked up so many decades ago (Sigmund was never happy with the way his family members used his psychoanalysis research to sell products, even though they used it to help sell the English version of his book).

There is more of it today, yes. Kids don't want toys, and hence we see Toys-R-Us disappear .. they do want games, and it's pretty important for people in tech to teach kids about how absolutely atrocious in-game purchases are and how you should NEVER participate in that rubbish and discourage everyone else from doing so in the hopes it eventually goes away.

But it won't, because there are always people who don't know, or even with full knowledge, can't help those addictions.

It's a complicated problem, but current phones/tech are just the medium.

But the medium can also be the message.

But the addiction component wasn't built-in the way it is now. Everyone remembers "Saturday morning cartoons with cereal" because there was a set time and place for that event. After the episode ended, it didn't auto-play the next episode, or recommend 5 highly similar shows based on your "viewing history".

Consider that "bingeing" is a commonly accepted term when it refers to consuming an entire season of a show in one sitting and companies like Netflix churn out TV shows with a focus on this "bingeability", because that's their differentiator compared to regular TV.

Yesterday, we had Nielsen doing rough tracking of viewership (IIRC, installing a Nielsen box was/is totally optional!), opinion polls, and focus groups. Mostly aggregate data on a program's performance.

Today, we're building elaborate user profiles and tailoring the viewing experience to the individual, using who-knows-what details (demographics, personal viewing habits, Amazon purchase history, eye-tracking data from your smart TV, you get the idea). These companies have a really good idea of what you like, and will use whatever data they can to maximize the time you spend on their platform.

Toys-R-Us died because the founder left, his successors couldn't keep innovating, they sold out to Bain and KKR, and then it was driven into the ground for margins.

It's not because "Kids don't want toys." You thinking kids don't want toys almost seems more like brainwashing than if kids actually didn't want toys anymore.

It's a difference only of efficiency, but it is large enough to create completely different kinds of problems.

Nobody has actually believed in that for decades, and it certainly isn't present in the public consciousness.